Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments Reviewed By Conny Crisalli of Bookpleasures.com

Conny Withay

Reviewer Conny Withay:Operating her own business
in office management since 1991, Conny is an avid reader, volunteers
reading the Bible to the elderly, and makes handmade jewelry. A cum
laude graduate with a degree in art living in the Pacific Northwest,
she is married with two sons, two daughter-in-laws, and one
granddaughter.

Are you the type of person
that loves television shows on forensic experiments and always wanted
to know how to do them yourself, in your own home, sometimes using
simple household products? Here is your chance to learn and do your
own experiments with detailed instructions in Robert B. Thompson and
Barbara Fritchman Thompson’s Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic
Science Experiments.

This four hundred and
twenty five page over-sized paperback in textbook format is ideal for
the home school parent or public school teacher to be used as the
basis of an academic, lab-based course on forensic science. With its
all-lab, no-lecture structure, the book is broken down into eleven
laboratory divisions that include list of materials, steps to do and
review questions that involve over fifty scientific experiments.
Besides bold red warning sections regarding safety issues performing
the projects throughout each chapter, the end of the book has almost
twenty pages of index. Included is an online reference website for
further questions, purchasing kits and other chemicals and necessary
products along with listings where items can be found commercially
and locally.

The beginning of the book
states that most current forensic work today is still done with the
same procedures scientists used one hundred years ago so forensic
tasks can be easily adapted by the do-it-yourself responsible
teenager or adult hobbyist or enthusiast at home. Thus each
descriptive venture can easily be understood and followed, producing
results one can learn and record.

Husband and wife
co-authors combine projects from soil samples and hair / fiber /
fabric specimens to fingerprints and blood along with drugs, gunshot
residue, inks and DNA analysis to name a few. After a couple of
chapters on safety, materials and instruments, there are a myriad of
themes of scientific experiments that include charts, color
photographs and tips or advanced suggestions in many ranges of simple
to complex projects. Using common household products like nail
polish, an iron, tape, alcohol, 9 volt batteries or aspirin,
assignments are explained step by step and theorized. One can learn
how to take fingerprints off glass, find out if a paper is forged or
test money to see if it has cocaine residue on it – all
scientifically.

With proper supervision,
this is an ideal book for middle-school and above students who are
interested in the “whys” behind forensic science and those who
want to challenge themselves in learning about chemical and physical
reactions used in our everyday lives.